POLICE OFFICER WRITERS - Joseph D. McNamara

About the San Jose Police Department

The City of San Jose was incorporated on March 27, 1850 and was selected as the State of California’s first state capital. Shortly after the incorporation, a City Marshal was established. Today, the San Jose Police Department is a modern police department that employs over 1300 police officers organized in four bureaus, eleven division and more than 35 specialized units. The San Jose Police Department is administered by a command staff including the Chief, Assistant Chief and four Deputy Chiefs, presiding over an Operations Command divided into four Bureaus.

The San Jose Police Department refers to its Patrol Division as “The Bureau of Field Operations” (BFO). BFO is the primary provider of police services for the residents of San Jose. BFO deploys over 1,000 officers to 178 square miles of the City on a 24-hour basis. BFO personnel are prepared to respond to both emergency and non-emergency calls for service in each of the City's sixteen patrol districts, which are further broken down into police “beats.” The sixteen patrol districts comprise four divisions, each containing four districts. Each division is commanded by a Police Captain, who oversees six lieutenants, 24 sergeants, and many officers.

BFO of the San Jose Police Department provides continuous availability of field units to respond to calls for service, provides visible patrol throughout the City, detects and apprehends persons actively involved in criminal activity, recovers and returns lost and stolen property, provides for the safe movement of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, performs the initial investigation of criminal offenses, and attempts to reduce both immediate and potentially hazardous situations to the community. In addition, The San Jose Police Department BFO provides field narcotics enforcement, downtown (Entertainment Zone) enforcement, gang abatement, youth-oriented services, cruise management, field training of recruit officers, air support, and tactical incident containment and resolution.

BFO staffs three Community Policing Centers, placed in strategic areas of the City, in order to provide additional services to outlying neighborhoods. All BFO programs are continuously analyzed and refined to provide quality police services to the City of San Jose.

Source:

sjpd.org

Chief of Police Joseph D. McNamara (retired) began his career as a New York Police Department police officer. While still in his 30s, he rose to the rank of Deputy Inspector (one rank above captain in NYPD’s hierchy). He left NYPD to become the Chief of Police of the Kansas City Police Department (Missouri). At that time, he was likely the youngest chief of police in a major city. He left Kansas City to take the reigns of the San Jose Police Department (California) as their chief.

Joseph D. McNamara has written for novels. The first three, The First Directive, Fatal Command and The Blue Mirage feature the character Finnbar Fraliegh. The books follow Fraliegh’s career from a detective sergeant in a large police department, to a newly formed police department as the chief of detectives and finally to the acting chief of police in a third.

According to the book description of Joseph D. McNamara’s fourth book, Code 211 Blue, “Kevin McKay is a hometown boy who grew up to be a cop. Now he's out of the fire and into the heat--transferred from narcotics to a serial rape case that is turning into murder. But while McKay scours San Francisco from the Tenderloin to Chinatown for a perp known only as Ski Mask, a web of betrayal is being spun by the most dangerous enemies a cop can ever have--the ones who carry a badge. Trusting no one--not his bosses, not the rich lady he's falling in love with--McKay is fighting back against a death trap with his wits, his courage, and his honor . . . on streets stained forever with blood.”